How to Map a Customer Journey in Ecommerce: The Data Behind Consumer Psychology and Experience

If I had to guess, 20% of the people who clicked on this article have already decided they have somewhere else to be. In ecommerce, it’s even worse.

Of course, who can blame them? With all of today’s online noise, it’s hard enough getting someone’s attention. Transforming that attention into a long-term customer relationship can feel near impossible — especially when you’re operating at scale.

“Experiences are more important than products now. In fact, experiences are products.”

“People increasingly share their experiences with companies and products in our connected economy, and we can either be active participants in creating and nurturing desired experiences or spend more and more time trying to react or make up for bad experiences.”

Just as in real life, a customer’s experience with your brand is all about the journey … but the only way to bring that journey to life in a reliable, repeatable way is through data.

Ready to grow your business with data analysis?

This article is an abbreviated excerpt from The Shopify Plus Data Analysis Course, one of many courses available exclusively to Shopify Plus merchants …

Manage Customer Journeys, Not Lifecycles

“[A connected experience] is all about ensuring the customer enjoys the experience of shopping with you, that you have the right products, that those products are available when they’re looking for them, and that when they have a question or a concern that someone is there to help.”

“That’s across all mediums, whether it’s a call center, a chat environment online, ecommerce versus in store, or now omni-channel.”

Customer journey maps should be adjusted on a monthly or quarterly basis to answer the question, “How can we add more value to our visitors at each step of this journey?” or “How can we help customers at each stage achieve their goals easier?”

Jet is currently leading the charge, leveraging consumer psychology along the buyer’s journey to generate $1 billion in ecommerce sales in their first year of business.

“Jet’s target audience is represented across almost every age and socioeconomic cohort, although it overindexes among millennials who have children and are college educated, and slightly overindexes on baby boomers.

“Our audience cares about value, they care about convenience, they want to make their life simple, and they care about service—all things we’re focused on profoundly.”

Jet has been able to utilize factors like convenience, simplicity, and service to drive sales. These factors stem from a profound knowledge of their customers, and not some amazing, last-ditch email campaign or fire sale.

From Personas to a Customer Journey Map Through Data

Before building your journey map(s), it is best to create customer personas to help you envision what your ideal customer might be going through when seeking your product.

This can be a lengthy process. Still, it’s worth putting the time in to get it right before defining the paths that different types of customers might take to purchase your products.

SilverPop, an IBM Company, explains that to create a good buyer persona, it helps to identify recent customers or loyalty program members who made a purchase on your website and interview them to understand::

Why were they looking for the product that they bought on your website?

How did they research the product?

What criteria helped them make their purchase decision?

Which of your competitors’ sites did they visit while evaluating products?

Why did they choose your website?

What was their experience like on your website when buying the product

and what can be improved?

It’s best to start small in the beginning and prioritize the most critical customer personas for your business.

The real key, however, is using your existing data to map the customer journey based on psychological principles to drive more sales.

Here’s how …

Step 1. Monitor Your Behavior Flow Report to See How Customers Move On Your Site

Understanding how users move through your store is critical to producing sales that follow a psychologically informed model.

For example, why would sales be low if you’re offering a discount code to all first-time visitors? The offer (or, ability) might be great, but consumers still lack the motivation to buy. In this case, it doesn’t matter how much products are discounted.

This all-too-common scenario can be uncovered with the Behavior Flow report inside Google Analytics.

Make sure to examine different segments of users, whether it’s first-time visitors, returning visitors, purchasers or create a custom segment for visitors with long session durations but no purchases:

Look for trends, like specific drop-off points where hoards of users left your site without converting. Conversely, look for commonalities between behavior. What page do most first-time visitors view after landing on your homepage? In the first stage of a customer journey map, you will start to notice that most of these first-touch pages revolve around building awareness before driving conversions.

You can also install Hindsight on your Shopify Plus store to record visitor sessions. You’ll get heat maps and also be able to see user behavior as they move from page to page.

Detailed session histories can generate ideas of which pages correspond to each stage of the journey.

For instance, your blog or story pages are often perfect jumping-off points to educate users. The Elephant Pants uses their story page to build awareness, leveraging it as an external force to push consumers from one stage to the next.

Live chat and coupon-based offers at the end of the story provide just the right trigger at the right time to help transition awareness to action.

Use the Behavior Flow report in Google Analytics to better understand the typical paths people take on your site. Then, leverage each step as an opportunity to provide the right motivations and triggers to keep them in your funnel.

Step 2. Analyze the Top Conversion Path Report to See What Platforms People Use at Each Stage

An omni-channel strategy or multi-channel strategy is critical because ready-made buyers don’t just materialize on your website. Instead, it often requires multiple touchpoints along multiple channels or platforms before they eventually pull the trigger.

As a result, it’s also more critical than ever to optimize people’s experience as they move from one platform to the next.

People might find your business through a referral on social media. They might read your tweets or browse your Instagram. Then, they might head back to your site for more — all before handing over their credit card.

Knowing the typical paths on your site is one thing, but it’s another to understand when and why customer’s use different channels prior to purchasing.

Fortunately, you can find this data for free using the Top Conversion Paths report in Google Analytics:

This report will show you which paths users take on different channels for the buyer’s journey. It can tell you if people are getting educated on specific platforms, and how they reached your site in the first place.

A more expanded view might look something like this:

Be sure to note these different channels and their specific order sequencing before purchase.

If you notice that social plays a huge role in awareness, add that to your buyer’s journey. You can later tap into this data and share content on social that focuses on brand building rather than selling, like Pura Vida:

If you’re a Shopify Plus merchant, you can access our custom Google Data Studio reports in our Data Analysis course to help you find your metrics that lead to a sale.

There you can see how many sessions the average user undertakes before making a purchase, and how many days it takes on average to make a purchase. You can further segment this by demographics or traffic source.

The decision to purchase ultimately comes down to one major thing: your relationship with your customers. Again, this means understanding consumer psychology and building a strong relationship by providing value at each stage of their journey.

The role of data is essentially an analytical version of the fifth habit in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Data analysis will help you uncover what your customer cares most about, then it’s your job to serve them the content, products, and offers in line with their desires.

If customers aren’t ready to buy, they won’t. And even if they are motivated, the wrong trigger or ability could limit their potential to slide down your funnel.

Only after mapping your customers’ existing journey, can you then test different types of content and offers at each stage. For example, test a storytelling email versus an offer as your email autoresponder when someone first signs up, or try split testing your remarketing campaigns with blog posts, “about us” videos and offers.

Maybe your retention strategy would be more effective if you had a weekly storytelling email with a softer call to action or vice versa.

Now, it’s your turn.

As part of our Shopify Plus exclusive Merchant Acceleration program, we’ve put together Customer Personas and Journey Mapping Templates to map out each stage of the buyer’s experience align it with the wants and needs of your buyer personas:

Use the various parts of the above template in harmony to craft experiences that compel action at each stage.

Final Thoughts

It’s never been more important to understand the psychology behind consumer behavior.

Buying has never been more complex because there’s never been this number of platforms, channels, options, alternatives, or competitors.

If you want to grow your business, it’s time to take a deep look at your customer personas and their journey. The trick to dominating a market isn’t just clever advertising, but rather a habit of continuously deepening your understanding of your customer and striving to add more value to their lives.

Attention and sales are a side effect of doing this well. At the end of the day, the brand that can motivate the market most will win.

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About the Author

Previously the Editor in Chief of Shopify Plus, Aaron Orendorff is the founder of iconiContent, a strategic agency “saving the world from bad content.” Named by Forbes as one of the top 10 B2B content marketers, his work has appeared on Mashable, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Fast Company, Inc., Success Magazine, The Next Web, Content Marketing Institute, and more.